


Lay Your Head Where It Burns

by unicornpoe



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (It's not), A Series of Little Moments, Ambiguously mentioned episodes, Angst, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Or Is It?, PTSD-like symptoms and unrealistic ways to deal with them, Platonic Cuddling, Promise, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Touching, this isn’t as sad as I’m making it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-09-01 06:50:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16760110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: They don’t talk about it. Not now, not ever. But when Sherlock slips in under John’s quilt, and slides one long arm around John’s (soft, warm, precious) middle, John threads their fingers together over his stomach, and both men smile into the dark.*John makes things quiet. John makes things good.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe it's been a whole 365 days since the first time I posted a fic to AO3? Neither can I. I dearly love every subscriber I've gotten over this past year, and I welcome any new ones to come! Thank you all so much for your loving support of me and my writing. It truly means the world to me, and I intend to keep delivering fics as the best kind of payment I can think of. As for now, please accept this as an enormous, heartfelt thank you from me to you. You—every last one of you—are amazing<3
> 
> This fic takes place over the span of the first two seasons, following canon (marginally closely, with a few small, hopefully welcomed deviations) but veers off sharply after that. You'll be able to tell.
> 
> Title from Love Me Like I'm Not Made Of Stone by Lykke Li.
> 
> Once again, thank you all. Enjoy!<3

They don’t talk about it.

John comes home with quiet on his lips and a smile in his eyes, and Sherlock takes his hand and pulls him down onto the sofa. They slide John’s jacket off of his shoulders together; drape it over the coffee table. And then John curls back against the armrest and Sherlock stretches out on top of him, burying his face in the (warm, soft, sweet-smelling, slightly scratchy) jumper covering John’s stomach.

John switches on the telly, because Sherlock has deleted remotes, and anyway he doesn’t care about anything they might watch. The singular thought in his mind is the steady pound of John’s heart beneath Sherlock’s ear, the delicate rasp of John’s breath stirring the curls atop Sherlock’s head, the heavy, protective weight of John’s arms wrapped around Sherlock’s back.

Usually, Sherlock falls asleep like this. He doesn’t sleep on his own, can’t. There are legions of demons that plague a man in an empty bed, and none so much as Sherlock Holmes. It’s against his nature to feel fear, and on these rare occasions that he does, avoidance is the best possible option.

He’s had years to learn how to avoid the trauma of nighttime behind his own eyelids. The beautiful horrors of his tick-tock-ticking mind.

John drowns them. Inexplicably, this very small, singularly thrilling army doctor battles those fears in Sherlock’s head, and he wins.

***

The first time it happens, John has just come back from a date, and Sherlock’s hands are shaking.

It’s a little after midnight. John smells of someone’s lily of the valley perfume; the scent hangs, thick and choking, in the doorway where he stands.

Sherlock has wedged himself into very farthest recesses of their couch, tied in a tight detective-shaped knot, his hands between his knees and his head down. He doesn’t need to look up to know that this date went well; John’s gait as he ascended the steps was quick and light, no hint of a limp, and he’s practically drenched in her perfume, so unless she threw the bottle at his head, there’s no way it went poorly. Sherlock feels something ugly and acrid burning in the base of his throat.

“Hey,” John says, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. He sounds hatefully cheerful. “I’m home.”

_ Home. Is that what this is to you? You’ve only been here eight weeks and you’re already calling Baker Street your home, whereas I lived here for four months without you and it hardly seemed like more than a holding cell, a transitional step, another place to come shoot up—what is it about you that turns places into homes? Why do I want to keep you why am I afraid of letting you go why do you keep leaving me why do I care? _

John’s step: close. Creaking the floorboards right in front of the sofa. Wave of (disgusting, revolting, nauseating, rotten, horrific) perfume.

“You alright?” John asks softly. “I, um. I don’t think you’ve moved since I’ve gone. Which is. Not good.”

_ I’m not good,  _ Sherlock thinks, and then he stands, pulls John’s jacket off of his shoulders, and tosses it to the floor.

John blinks at him, stunned, and Sherlock appreciates the fact that he held still. John is a soldier, he’s killed people, he’s no stranger to reacting violently when he’s startled, and yet he didn’t. He held back.

“You trust me,” Sherlock says. His hands are empty at his sides, but they no longer shake.

John laughs. That bright, breathy, happy thing that Sherlock’s heard more and more over the weeks that they’ve lived together. “Well, yes, I think it’s pretty clear that I do,” he says.

_ Nothing is clear,  _ Sherlock thinks.

“Any reason you just stripped me?” John asks, gesturing weakly at the black, odiferous mass of his jacket lying crumpled before his armchair. “Or is that just something I should get used to?...”

Sherlock doesn’t bother to answer. He takes John’s wrist in a loose grip and then topples backwards onto the sofa, pulling John down with him.

They land in a sort of heap on the cushions: Sherlock underneath, John half on top of him, his face smashed against Sherlock’s neck. He’s breathing softly.

_ I’d like to keep you here, please, with me, and never let you go. Is that ok? Is that good? Can I please, John? _

“Okay,” John says. “Right. This is… surprisingly nice, actually.” He shuffles them around a bit until they’re sitting side-by-side on the sofa, John’s arm around Sherlock’s shoulders, Sherlock leaning up against him.

Then he grabs the remote and switches on the telly.

***

It doesn’t happen every night. Sometimes Sherlock is eyeballs-deep in an experiment he can’t get away from; sometimes John has a date. But it always happens at least twice a week, and some weeks even more.

They don’t have to talk about it, not really, not out loud. Sherlock knows when John wants to, needs to, can tell when it’s going to happen, and it’s like clockwork, he thinks, like winding gears, they way they come together and slot into place.

John doesn’t know when Sherlock wants to.

Sherlock wants to all the time.

It happens often enough that Sherlock doesn’t bother with sleep on nights when it doesn’t. He always sleeps perfectly well after John holds him until he’s slipped under, and wakes up in the morning with their blanket tucked around him like a shield.

***

Afternoon. The sun is a watercoloured stain upon the grey canvas of the sky, and Sherlock is contemplating cocaine.

It’s been a very long time, he realizes distantly, since he’s been high. Since the Time Before John. He hasn’t even  _ really  _ wanted it, because all of the reasons he used it are obsolete and

_ I hate to say that you are a replacement for drugs, John, because it isn’t true, you aren’t a replacement for anything, you are  _ everything  _ to me and I don’t think you know. Do you know? You make my veins itch while my blood pumps through them because I am so devastatingly alive, you hurt when I think about you, the way you press me against you when it’s dark and nobody can see, not even us, nobody can see me love you _

he dumps the last of his stash down the toilet and flushes thrice.

***

Another date, but this time it went horribly. Sherlock is a Molotov cocktail of mixed emotions: vindication, jealousy, regret. Want. He eyes John as John walks stiltedly across the room, his thin little mouth a grim little line across his face.

“Why do you do it?” Sherlock asks him. His voice is rusty with disuse. John has not been home all day, and there isn’t anyone else who matters. Sherlock hasn’t spoken.

_ Why do you keep trying with people who aren’t me? _ he means.  _ I make you happy. Don’t I make you happy, John? I love you. _

John meets his eyes as he shrugs stiffly out of his jacket. He has a way of looking that could start wars, Sherlock thinks.

“What else can I do?” John asks softly. He wants an answer, Sherlock realizes, and panic blooms because he  _ has  _ an answer, only it is  _ not good,  _ it is  _ wrong,  _ it is  _ too soon.  _

“Come here,” Sherlock says, and John does.

He stands before Sherlock, looking down at him with an expression on his face that is too difficult to deduce at this moment. Sherlock—supine upon the sofa—stretches his arms up for him, and John’s mouth makes a twisted shape, his throat makes a twisted noise, and he crawls on top of Sherlock and nestles his head under Sherlock’s chin and his body between Sherlock’s legs.

Nobody switches the telly on tonight. John falls asleep with Sherlock as his pillow, and Sherlock falls asleep with the warm safety of John draped over his cracked, throbbing heart.

***

On occasion, John leaves. These are never pleasant times.

“I’ve gotta go to this lecture if I want to keep my medical license, Sherlock,” John says. He’s standing in their doorway, smart little suitcase all done up in drab brown leather propped against his legs. He’s  _ dithering.  _ That only makes things marginally better.

John is offering this information up out of what would appear to be thin air to anyone else, but what is actually very strong non-verbal protestation on Sherlock’s part.

“Of course, John,” Sherlock says politely as he looks John dead in the eye and begins slicing half a brain into very thin pieces right on top of their freshly cleaned worktop.

_ See? See what I’ll get up to when you’re gone? Please don’t go. _

John sighs. His elegant nose is tipped slightly up into the air, as if he’s scrambling desperately not to sink to Sherlock’s levels of  _ fuck the medical license.  _ This makes things marginally better, too.

“Three days. I’ll only be gone for three days which is  _ not very many days,  _ Sherlock, you’ll be  _ fine.” _

“Obviously I shall. I lived very well on my own for thirty-four years without you, John, thank you very much.”

Which they both know is grossly untrue. Sherlock  _ survived _ without John. He only started living five months ago, when a killer wrapped in a jumper looked at Sherlock in a lab.

“Alright, okay,” John says, holding both hands up as if in surrender and shaking his head a little, and Sherlock tells that bright kernel of hope in his chest to stay dead but it just doesn’t listen. John points at him. “You. Wanker. Stop looking at me like that.”

Something about Sherlock is crumbling, very slowly but surely, turning into papery flecks of gunmetal-grey ash.

_ How could you leave me? I’m good for you, John Watson, just as completely (indubitably, definitely, certainly) as you are good for me. You will leave, and everything will be boring, and I’ll lay here and rot from the inside out without you, because nothing else keeps the villains inside me away, nobody else does, and I’ve gotten complacent in battling them. How will I rest when you are gone? _

Melodrama. Sherlock loathes himself. He can’t turn his brain off.

“Ah, no, it got worse. That look. That face thing you’re doing— _ Sherlock.” _

John comes over to Sherlock. He isn’t smiling. His eyelashes are the colour of melted butter, the colour of leprechaun gold, and Sherlock wants to feel them on the insides of his wrists.

“Do try to speak in full sentences John—oh.”

John has his arms around Sherlock. John Watson has put his (strong, protective, lovely) arms around Sherlock Holmes in the  _ daylight in the middle of their kitchen  _ and he’s pressing Sherlock close to him in what can only be described as a hug, pressing close to him until there isn’t an inch of empty space between their bodies.

John’s hair is soft against Sherlock’s cheek; he cannot physically stop himself from rubbing against the top of his head just a little bit, from winding his arms around John’s waist and hugging back. 

They stand there like that so long that soon the only sounds left in the world are the  _ thud, thud, thuds _ of their hearts and the  _ tick, tock, ticks _ of the clock above the kitchen sink.

Sherlock closes his eyes, holds his breath. He wants to preserve this moment in resin, tie it to a chain that he can wear around his neck and look at when he doesn’t have John anymore. He misses now, before now is even gone. He aches with predestined loneliness.

John hums noncommittally as he pulls away; his hands linger on Sherlock’s biceps lightly, thumbs pressing down on the tender muscle and skin and bone below. Their eyes meet, and John’s are clear and blue, blue, bluer than the most romanticized sky.

“Goodbye, John,” Sherlock murmurs.

Half of John’s mouth quirks upwards into a melancholy sort of smile.

“Goodbye, Sherlock.”

***

Day One Without John: progresses with remarkably little incident, and nothing but the lingering bitter taste of abandonment on the back of his tongue.

Lestrade calls in with a case that keeps Sherlock busy and out of Baker Street for nineteen hours, three of which are spent doing the paperwork that John always does for him, and by the time Sherlock gets home, he is only just beginning to notice the enormous empty space at his side.

It’s difficult, he realizes, to do  _ anything _ without the enigmatic, highly-dangerous army doctor there to murmur encouraging things to him. It’s disgusting. When did he become reliant on such pedestrian modes of human contact?

“Sentiment,” he scoffs under his breath as he climbs the steps on tired legs, hanging onto the handrail with a bit more weight than usual. It’s odd to walk these steps without the comforting presence of somebody behind him, always ready to catch him if he falls. It’s uncomfortable. It’s  _ wrong. _

He’s into Day Two Without John, albeit the early hours of it. It’s two am, and he hasn’t eaten anything because there’s nobody here to make him (and he wouldn’t listen to anyone other than John, anyway) and he hasn’t slept since Thursday because that’s the last day that John held him, and oh,  _ hell _ , he misses John.

He tells himself it’s because he’s exhausted. He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t expect anything to come of it, anyway. He tells himself it’s for no reason at all.

None of those rationalizations are true.

Sherlock peels his coat—heavy and damp with rain—off of himself and tosses it haphazardly on the back of John’s armchair. Then he fishes his mobile out of his trouser pocket, hits speeddial number one, and falls backwards onto the sofa,  _ so so so tired. _

Ring: once. Twice. Three times.

_ John please pick up, please answer, I miss you, do you miss me? You would have loved this case, John, you would have thought me oh so very clever, and smiled that smile at me that makes the backs of my knees feel like someone has replaced my joints with jelly, and after we could have come home and maybe you would have held me, just for a little bit, just until I fell asleep. You hugged me. I won’t forget that. _

“Sherlock? Everything okay?”

John’s voice sounds thick and muzzy with sleep, a little bit slurred and a little bit scared. Sherlock beams.

“You miss me,” he breathes into his mobile. His heart is swinging on a pendulum through his ribcage, rocking him side to side with the motion of it, and his head is spinning.

John is silent on the other end of the line, nothing but the static of the call between them. Finally he says, “Er. Yeah. I do.” He sounds a bit sheepish about it, and Sherlock wants to tell him  _ no, don’t be ashamed, John, for you are the most brilliant thing.  _ “Is that why you called?” he asks, bemused.

“I solved a case today, and I was brilliant, and nobody told me so,” Sherlock says. He yawns, curls over on his side, cradles the mobile to his left ear. His eyes drift shut, and he imagines John on the other side of this call; lounging in some white hotel bed, too many pillows, his hair messy and his grey t-shirt clinging to his shoulders a little bit. He would be sleepy-eyed, his mouth would be soft and pliant and pink. He would be smiling at Sherlock like he’s beautiful. “I did paperwork.”

“I’m very proud of you,” John says with a little laugh in his voice. Sherlock’s smile spreads even wider.  _ “ _ I would’ve told you so.”

Sherlock presses his hot cheek into the cool leather of their couch. “I know.”

“So,” John says; there’s the static sound of shifting sheets in the background. “Good case?”

“Mm,” says. His eyelids feel curiously heavy, wilting under the soft, musical tenor of John’s voice.

John laughs softly, and Sherlock’s toes curl with

_ I think I’m happy. I think that this is the first time I’ve completely, truly known what it feels like to be happy, and isn’t that strange, John? It’s you, you know. You sculpt my emotions like so much clay, and there’s something ghastly and romantic about that and I don’t understand it but maybe I don’t need to _

pleasure.

“You sound sleepy,” John says softly. He’s lowered his tone to a gentle lull automatically, and Sherlock lets his eyes drift closed, just listening. “When’s the last time you slept, Sherlock?”

Sherlock can’t say  _ four days ago, _ because he might as well be saying  _ the last time you held me,  _ and that is nothing more than passing John Watson his raw, throbbing heart with both hands.

“Four days ago, wasn’t it? Thursday?” John says, and Sherlock’s face flames even brighter. Sherlock stays silent, and John tuts loudly but with a certain brand of fondness that sets the whole word rocking. “You’ve got to  _ sleep _ , Sherlock,” John murmurs, and Sherlock smiles, and lets John’s words fade in and out of his consciousness as slowly, gently, quietly, he drifts off to do just that. 

***

They hug now. Apparently this is a thing that they do.

John hugs like a heart attack: swift, fatal, without warning. Sherlock finds himself delighted more often than not, because he is never happier than when John’s hands are on him. No longer is their touch relegated to scant evenings on the sofa; John pulls Sherlock close almost every day, sometimes several times.

He comes up behind Sherlock while he’s standing at the window, sliding his arms around Sherlock’s waist and resting his chin on Sherlock’s bony shoulder for a few seconds, then slipping away before Sherlock can start his heart back up again. At the end of a case, when the vibrating elation that Sherlock’s been existing on has dissipated along with the mystery, John holds Sherlock close on their cab ride home, and on the sofa, and doesn’t let go until morning.

Christmas comes, and John’s hugs begin to fade. His looks are tampered with something disturbingly like jealousy; the way he stiffens every time that awful Woman texts Sherlock makes Sherlock miserable. There is a wall thrown up between them, suddenly and without warning, and Sherlock finds that he would do almost anything to get it torn down.

John thinks he’s mourning the death of this Woman who has come in and hurt them. Sherlock used to find her fascinating; now he’s just exhausted. For even in death she’s serving to keep them apart, to keep John’s looks guarded and his touch rare.

Sherlock draws in on himself. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat; he crawls out onto the roof of 221b one night in January, sits right down in the snow, and chain smokes half a pack of cigarettes before John finds him.

His lungs are on fire as he stares at John, limbs buzzing and trembling in a combination of the nicotine coursing through them, and his effort to keep from grabbing John and burrowing into his hold.

John climbs out beside Sherlock in only his pyjamas, dressing gown, and slippers, navigating the icy roof with a stiff, beautiful kind of grace. He stops so close that Sherlock can feel John’s little puffs of condensed air like clouds against his skin.

“Is this is a danger night?” John asks him quietly.

_ Every night is a danger night. I’m hurt by you, I’m confused by you, and I don’t even know how to tell you why. I think that I should stay out here and smoke until my lungs are made of coal, don’t you? Or I should come inside and slide under the covers of your bed and wait for you to come in, and then when you see me there, when you pull back your comforter and see me there, you’ll smile and bend and kiss me on the top of my head and say— _

“Sherlock,” John murmurs, lifting a hand and curling his fingers around Sherlock’s wrist, and that’s it, that does it—Sherlock falls into John, wrapping his limbs around him as tightly as they will go, resting his temple against the top of John’s head, relishing the warmth of him, the delicious way he automatically holds Sherlock back.

“Oh,” John is saying. His voice sounds like a revelation; his hand is rubbing soothing circles at the nape of Sherlock’s neck. “Oh, Sherlock, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize… I’m sorry. Let’s come inside now.”

They do.

They sleep, and do not dream.

***

Sherlock doesn’t even realize that John has stopped dating women until suddenly he’s looking at one like he  _ wants to. _

And it’s completely Sherlock’s fault.

He sent John to talk to Louise Mortimer purely because he needed John  _ back with him immediately.  _ He doesn’t know how to say things to this man; he can’t figure out how to tell John that  _ no _ , Sherlock  _ doesn’t have friends, _ Sherlock has one friend, and that friend is  _ John, _ and “friend” is such a mild term for what they are anyway, it just—

But he’s cocked things up. Because now John is back, yeah, but he’s sitting at a table with that objectively attractive woman and chatting her up. And John hasn’t done that since Christmas.

John hasn’t dated since Christmas.

When finally they go back to their room at the inn that night, John is still radiating hurt. It’s a hurt that he hides well; his mask of anger is thick, impenetrable to anyone who isn’t Sherlock Holmes. But Sherlock sees right through it to the pain that lies beneath, and he hates himself for it.

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not good for you, and we both know it. Why do you stay? _

They get ready for bed silently, taking turns in the bathroom with a coordinated, clockwork sort of routine. They’re two stars orbiting the same galaxy, never meeting. Sherlock has to smile at it as he pulls on his pyjamas, even though his heart hurts.

By the time Sherlock migrates back into the bedroom, John is wound in a tight little ball in his bed. He’s facing the wall, and the quilt is pulled all the way up to his chin. He radiates an aura of extreme prickliness.

Sherlock hesitates in the center of the room. He’s still shaken from whatever happened earlier, he can’t deny that, and there’s no way he’ll ever even approach the edge of sleep without the warmth of John wrapped around him. 

But John is angry. John is injured. And it’s Sherlock’s fault.

Sherlock very rarely has any qualms about asking John for anything me might desire but, contrary to what many idiots believe, he always  _ always _ has John’s happiness on his mind, if not precisely his well-being. Frustration builds, and he swallows hot against the shame burning him up. He  _ doesn’t know how to fix things. _

_ “ _ Get in,” John grits out hoarsely. Sherlock jumps, his nerves alight with awareness on a night like tonight, and then almost falls over himself in his haste to reach John’s side.

They don’t talk about it. Not now, not ever. But when Sherlock slips in under John’s quilt, and slides one long arm around John’s (soft, warm, precious) middle, John threads their fingers together over his stomach, and both men smile into the dark.

***

Case. Case. Case.

Sherlock hardly ever sleeps the whole night through now, just from sheer busyness; but he always finds time to hold and be held, even if it’s just for a few seconds. He finds that John Watson + the tragic miracle of Sherlock’s brain = optimal functioning, no matter the time or state of wakefulness. It’s a formula that has yet to be proven wrong.

Moriarty looms in their periphery just as he has done for months now, only finally, finally Sherlock isn’t the only one who senses him encroaching: John walks half an inch closer to Sherlock than he ever has, he sits them in tables close to the door at restaurants and doesn’t like Sherlock to go off on his own.

Sherlock has no complaint. Just as the Moriarty situation is changing, he and John are, too. They are slowly, steadily stumbling forward into something inevitable and right; something that Sherlock knows John can feel.

And the fear rises up.

_ If we do what I think we’re going to do, John, and then I have to leave you, how will I survive? How will  _ you  _ survive? The two of us our tying our souls into a knot that will be impossible to sever gracefully. _

Things are better and worse than they’ve ever been.

John is on high alert the day of the Moriarty trial; he holds Sherlock’s hand in the cab on the way over, hugs him before they enter the courtroom and murmurs “don’t be an idiot” as he lets him go. Sherlock feels John’s gaze on him the whole time he’s testifying, and it serves as a welcome distraction from the serpentine figure of Jim Moriarty, leering like a hunter in the corner.

Of course, Sherlock proceeds to be an idiot.

Oh but it feels good. And John’s face is not entirely displeased, even as he berates Sherlock, so Sherlock can’t find it within himself to care.

***

“Take my hand.”

John doesn’t hesitate; he wraps his fingers around Sherlock’s and holds tight, and they race through the streets with heartbeats that sound like thunder.

Sherlock can’t think, can’t think, can’t think. He vaults over the fence that appears in their way as he tugs John along beside him, but then there is a hand fisted in the collar of his coat and he’s being hauled forwards, and John’s face is right there, perfect and shining and tipped up towards him in the moonlight and

_ Is this it? Is it happening now? Inopportune timing, John, because I think I’m going to die soon, I really really do, but I couldn’t deny you anything if that’s what you want, I’d do anything for you, I think, I think I’m about to do everything _

“We are going to have,” John says, his breathing unsteady, his eyes dark, “to coordinate.”

***

Breaking into Kitty Riley’s house is simple. They squirm in through a window that’s (stupidly, ignorantly, conveniently) left unlocked and stumble into the dark sitting room. John leads Sherlock with a hand at the dip of his waist; there is nothing but their points of contact, and the hushed, rattling sound of John’s panting.

They sink down onto Kitty’s sofa. Sherlock crowds close to John, because suddenly there is a knot of terror in his throat that’s spreading through the rest of him. How can he leave this? How can he leave John? Will he have to? For how long? Will John forgive—

John’s lips pressed against Sherlock’s hairline. Soft, warm, a little bit chapped.

John’s lips pressed against Sherlock’s ear. “Hush,” he breathes.

Slowly, some of the tension trickles out of Sherlock in long, dark strands. He closes his eyes and savors John, and when the door of the flat opens and the light turns on, he is ready.

He is ready.

***

Sherlock Holmes has to die.

And John Watson doesn’t know.

***

The last time he feels John’s hands on him, he is splayed upon a slab of blood-stained concrete.

He is not breathing. 

He is dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you I’d finish it! Thank you for sticking around<3 This ended up a lot sadder and longer than I thought it would be sooooo... enjoy!
> 
> TW: mild PTSD symptoms, mentions of torture, descriptions of injuries, references to alcohol as a coping mechanism. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me on Twitter @unicornpoe.

John teaches himself not to love Sherlock anymore. 

With Sherlock alive he had someone to channel this love into, someone to let it drift close to and lean against. Now, it hovers around John like a shroud, weighing him down until his shoulders nearly buckle with its heft.

_ You don’t love him _ , he says to himself, the sudden emptiness of their flat echoing around him as he clings to Sherlock’s soft blue scarf with shaking fingers.

_ You don’t love him, _ he says to himself as he stands, his spine brittle and stiff, his eyes so dry that they burn, beside Sherlock’s coffin as it’s lowered into the gaping maw of the ground.

_ You don’t love him _ , he says to himself, loading box after box into the back of a cab and never once looking back.

“You don’t love him,” he whispers aloud as he crosses the threshold of his new flat. The words ring. The walls are bare—pale beige—and there’s dust in the seams where the carpet meets the walls.

John sinks to his knees right where he stands, the box he’s holding toppling out of his hold and spilling onto the floor. Out pours a soft blue scarf, stiff and crusted with blood, with tears, with the echoes of John’s grasping fingertips.

John presses a fist to his mouth; it does nothing to muffle his sobs.

_ I love you. _

He’d never gotten the chance to say.

***

Time moves like an elastic band. Days stretch into weeks into months, marked only by the splash of rain against the window panes, by the ache that John is very slowly learning to live with.

Time turns like the pages of an empty book.

There is a knock upon the door.

And then time stops.

***

A glimpse of dark curls, the splash of grey eyes like river water, blue veins coursing thin and delicate just beneath pale skin.

He doesn’t take up any space in the doorway. He’s shrunk so small that he can’t catch John when he tips forward so down they both go, limbs a vicious, clinging snarl on the frozen floor, and John breathes warm and sad and scared against him.

***

John tells him.

“I tried to stop loving you.”

They haven’t moved. John’s knees ache where they’re pressed against the hardwood; every inch of Sherlock is wracked with tremors. Sherlock feels like nothing more than a shadow in John’s arms, a wisp of smokey air, and it’s this—this more than anything else—that makes the tears well hot and thick beneath John’s eyelids.

When he speaks again, his voice is just as thin as the ghost he’s clutching, just as trembling:

“It didn’t work.”

Sherlock is utterly silent. His head rests in the crook of John’s neck, and his thin fingers are like claws where they grip into the fabric of John’s jumper. Metallic, animal terror radiates from the shadows of his wrists, the stark jab of his ribs, the loud rasp of his shallow breath, and he’s silent, silent, silent.

Silent like the dead.

“I love you,” John says, and he doesn’t even know if the words make it past the rawness of his throat.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wasn’t supposed to tell him like this. It should have been a goldenrod morning, a newborn day; it should have been a soft, hopeful, fledgling promise. Not this cracked and stunted thing that sounds like a confession of the damned.

For the first time since that day so long ago, John hears Sherlock speak.

“John,” he rasps.

The avalanche of his voice mutilates John.

His chest throbs like he’s been stabbed and he breathes in sharply through his nose as the horror of the past two years comes crashing down upon him. The harrowing, wild, aching sadness that has fused to his core, the nights spent in his empty flat with an empty bed with an empty bottle, the days spent just struggling to stand. The way his thoughts would twist, taunting him with the mirage of the only person in the world he ever cared to see again, and the only person in the world he  _ couldn’t.  _ The fever of his dreams, where instead of sand made thick with blood and a pounding, parching sun, the sickness of his sleep showed him a pale, cracked skull on a pale, cracked sidewalk, and the blood was the colour of wine.

The rage that sustained him for a period of months, until that too fractured, and there was nothing left of him but the love he tried his best to kill.

John’s hands clench reflexively at the nape of Sherlock’s neck and the small of his back, fingers digging into cold, shivering flesh. Sherlock flinches at the movement, freezing—and then he completely crumples into John with a noise like a sob.

“John,” he says, lips against John’s pulse, and then: “John, John, John,” a murmured, wretched litany that rises in desperation with ever syllable.

Later, much later, John will wonder why he was never angry. John will wonder why his first instinct wasn’t to bruise his knuckles against Sherlock’s flesh, to inflict some of the pain that he’s been feeling upon this man who utterly wrecked him.

John will wonder why, instead, he held Sherlock in his chilly hallway on the barren floor until the tragic song of his name had faded to quiet gasps. John will wonder why he guided Sherlock up with two palms on his skinny waist, why he pulled him close, why he walked him down the hall and into his tiny flat and onto his tiny sofa.

John will wonder why he rolled himself against Sherlock, why he cradled him close, why he covered them both with the blanket from the back of the sofa. John will wonder why he didn’t let go of him, not once, not  _ ever again _ , not through that long, long night.

But John won’t wonder for long.

He loves him.

***

Morning dawns. The sickly-grey light of winter trickles in through the curtain-less window, and John raises himself up on one elbow so that it doesn’t touch Sherlock, and pulls the blanket up to Sherlock’s chin.

He’s asleep; his eyes move with a lightning-fast dream beneath his crepe paper eyelids, and the corners of his lips are turned down—but he holds John, his fingers still in their ironclad grasp of last night, and he breathes.

He breathes.

John hasn’t gotten the chance to look at him—to really  _ look _ at him—and he does so now.

Sherlock doesn’t sleep like he used to.

Tense: the lines across his forehead held in vigilance, the angles of his jaw taught and ready to snap. He looks exhausted even in slumber, pale and breathing quickly, and it’s only this that convinces John he’s actually here.

The Sherlock in his head would be happy and well.

***

There’s no warning when Sherlock awakens. He’s simply sleeping, and then he isn’t; his eyes flash open and against John’s, and they stay that way. It’s a shiver of wet-pavement-grey that John doesn’t remember how to fight against. 

Sherlock’s lips part. They are chapped and cracked, and they’ve bled and dried again in the cold. “John,” he says. There’s no substance to his voice, no ringing command, no subtle body. He sounds like he’s shattered from the inside.

There are so many things that John could ask him, so many questions he could have answered and mysteries he could have explained… but that isn’t what he wants.

He has all he wants.

“Don’t leave me ever again,” John says, so fiercely that Sherlock’s brow gentles a little bit as he watches. His fingers palpitate the ditches and hills of John’s rib cage, and John sucks in a breath that trembles in his lungs. “I don’t care how you did it, Sherlock. I just care that you came back.” John lowers himself back down and presses their foreheads together, cupping Sherlock’s cold cheek in his palm. His voice lowers to a whisper, and it runs across Sherlock’s skin. “I wouldn’t survive it a second time.”

Sherlock flinches, so John curls up beside him, nestling under his arm. They stay that way until the grey morning light has gone burnished with the afternoon sun.

***

They go home.

Sherlock doesn’t speak, and John doesn’t ask him to. It is enough that he’s here, that he’s whole, that he’s John’s again. Sherlock has shrunk down into his coat, seems barely more than a ghost in the yards of fabric—torn in some places, dirty and bloodstained in others—so John doesn’t take his hands off of him, and Sherlock doesn’t move away.

They just stay close. They just breathe into the absence of distance between them, and refuse to broaden it.

Mrs. Hudson screams, clutches first her hands to her heart, then Sherlock. He bows like a slender tree and wraps her close, shutting his eyes tightly and resting his cheek with such tender gentleness against her soft hair that John doesn’t try to hide the fact that his eyes have gone wet again.

“My boy,” Mrs. Hudson murmurs over and over again, rocking Sherlock in her arms like an overgrown child. She stretches a hand out to John and he takes it, letting himself be pulled into their embrace. “My dear boys.”

Sherlock’s fingers, warm and shaking on the back of John’s neck. Mrs. Hudson’s blouse, scratching and talcum-scented on John’s cheek.

She kept 221b wrapped up for them like a present, a surprise, a memorial. “Not your housekeeper,” she says while fluffing a pillow. As Sherlock bends to place a swift kiss upon her cheek, John murmurs to himself, “Indeed.”

They walk Sherlock to his armchair, and John lowers him down gently. Sherlock pulls his knees up to his chest; he stares blindly out over the sitting room, raking his gaze over the coffee table, his shelves of books, the skull on the mantelpiece, John’s chair and the Union Jack pillow perched atop it.

There is a beat.

John’s hands drift to the collar of Sherlock’s coat. They hover.

Sherlock’s head falls. He covers his face with his hands.

Mrs. Hudson makes a noise that sounds like sadness. She squeezes John’s shoulder as she passes him, and she must leave the room at some point but John isn’t paying attention. He kneels before Sherlock, both hands on his shoulders, thumbs tracing soothing lines into the skin that peeps out of Sherlock’s collar, and Sherlock’s shoulders shake silently.

***

His things have been kept in museum-quality precision, free from dust and damp and the erosion that worldly possessions acquire when their possessors die. When Sherlock comes out of his room in his blue silk dressing gown and familiar pyjamas, it is almost as if nothing these past two years has happened at all—almost, if not for the battered, harrowed look of Sherlock, and the sadness that makes their movements seem like miracles.

There is a fire crackling in the hearth, and John is standing before it. Waiting for him. Sherlock walks on unsteady legs towards him and takes both of John’s hands into his own; his skin feels cool and paper thin under John’s calloused fingertips, and John’s chest hitches when he thinks of tearing through it on accident, breaking the fragile weave of it, letting bright burgundy blood seep through the cracks.

“John,” Sherlock says to him. His shoulders are high and tense; everything about him is too brittle, too breakable, too fragile, too precious to fathom. When he breathes in, John imagines the blood that circulates throughout him, the heart that pumps that blood, the lungs that expand to take in fresh air and the bones that hold him up.

Safe. He’s safe, he’s real, he’s here. He’s John’s.

Sherlock left, and the empty space he made has been John’s constant companion for two years. Aching, vast—and now he is back, and he doesn’t fit the space exactly, but the space fits  _ him.  _ The emptiness holds him, lets itself be filled by him.

John loves him.

***

Greg goes to hit him, and hugs him instead. Donovan stands to the side, arms crossed over her chest, and says nothing.

John takes Sherlock’s hand, and doesn’t let go.

***

Sherlock doesn’t sleep. He watches John climb the steps to his room with deep, clear eyes from his chair in the corner, and when John comes down in the morning he’s in the same position. John hears him wandering during the long night hours: the floorboards cracking and settling beneath his feet, doors opening under his palm and stairs shifting with his weight. Sherlock is like a ghost, roaming the halls of a place he can’t ever physically inhabit again.

He doesn’t play his violin, either. It sits in its case on the shelf—strings gathering more dust than they did when he was away, sleek, burnished wood going dull.

They take cases, and Sherlock operates them with a sort of detached efficiency that makes John nervous. Sherlock is quieter than he’s ever been. Thinner than John’s ever seen him. More polite that John was aware he knew how to be.

There is something haunted and missing about him that John just can’t understand how to fix. Something broke him while he was away. If John ever learns who or what that something was, he will not stop in breaking them back.

Sherlock Holmes has been alive for five days, and John misses him with an ache that threatens to consume.

The sky is like gunmetal above Baker Street when John gets home that evening. The air hangs, heavy and humid with condensed rain that hesitates to fall, and John can feel it curling up under the hems of his clothing, sticking to him like a second layer of skin.

He shivers.

Sherlock is standing outside the door of 221, cloaked in his freshly-laundered armor. One hand is sunk deep into his coat pocket; the other routinely lifts a cigarette to his pale lips, arm moving like machinery. Dark smoke puffs around him—low-hanging clouds. His eyes are tightly shut, and he lets the current of foot traffic sway him.

Coming up beside him, John sets a hand on his arm, which is trembling very lightly beneath his fingertips. “Sherlock,” he says. “What are you—”

Sherlock, stiffens, jumps, sinks to a crouch on the dirty pavement with his arms shielding him and his head buried and his voice a severed scream in his throat. His abandoned cigarette burns like a tiny sun a few inches away from John’s shoes; the smoke curls delicately into his face.

John drops next to him, knees smacking the ground with a crack. He doesn’t touch Sherlock; his hands go out but he doesn’t touch, and his heart flies into his throat.

Sherlock meets his gaze. His eyes are wide and dazed, the colour of unsettled lakes, and his lips tremble as he breathes in.

“Sometimes,” he says—very softly, too softly, words like echoes in John’s ears— “I forget that I’m real.”

John slides his palms under the folds of Sherlock’s coat, pressing close to the warm, thin skin stretched across his ribs. He digs in with the tips of his fingers, hard enough for Sherlock to feel, and Sherlock shudders against him, arms hanging limp at his sides. His falls forward. His forehead comes to rest at the crook of John’s neck.

“You’re real,” John says. “You’re more real than anything else.”

John lets his hands meander along the sides of Sherlock’s rib cage, around the curve of his waist, up the flat, smooth planes of his scapula—

John stops.

Something raised and hot beneath the tips of his fingers. A mountain range of torn up skin, a web of cracks and divots and angry places—and Sherlock stiffens when John feels him, curls tighter, flinches.

“I didn’t want to be real,” Sherlock says. He hasn’t spoken in full sentences for so long, and now the words pump out of him, hot and fast like blood from a wound. They spill over John. Sticky. “When I was gone. It was so long, and I couldn’t...” His voice wavers and John feels the anger building within him; a fast, frigid spike of it, shot up from his stomach to his throat. “I wished I wasn’t real.” 

John’s hands shake as he helps Sherlock stand. He grinds the burning ember of Sherlock’s discarded cigarette into the sidewalk with his heel and Sherlock grips his forearms, breathing fast.

“Come inside,” John manages to whisper to him, as the oppressive atmosphere of London bears down on them, shoving them closer, closer, closer to the ground. John hears the crack of a whip in the back of his mind, he sees the glint of a knife and hears a scream that sounds like somebody he loves. Pulling Sherlock forward step by step, they inch their way toward the shelter of 221b, the safety of their home. “Come inside, Sherlock,” he murmurs. “Follow me, love.”

John doesn’t stop until they’re all the way upstairs, all the way to John’s room, with the neat corners on his bed and the dusty windowsills and the empty tea mug on the nightstand. With the curtains closed, and the dry, gentle warmth from the heater, and  _ safe, home, safe, home. _

Sherlock sits on the edge of John’s bed. Shoulders stooped, head low, he lets John push his damp coat off of his shoulders and fold it over the chair in the corner; lets John brush his wet fringe away from his eyes; lets John’s fingers start on the buttons at the base of Sherlock’s throat, clumsy and swift.

“Is this ok?” John asks him.

The overhead light isn’t on. Pale light trickles in through the cracks of John’s curtains, and in the half-light, Sherlock’s eyes look like scorch marks as he lifts his chin and nods. His hands come up to rest on top of John’s, gently encouraging, and so John touches his lips to Sherlock’s temple and leaves them there as, together, they unbutton his shirt.

And looking, John waits a moment. Sherlock’s thumbs rub small circles against John’s wrists as John scans his eyes over the complex unit of bones and paper-thin skin that makes up Sherlock Holmes; the thudding of his heartbeat that echoes in the dusky air around them, the hollows like wells that rest behind Sherlock’s collar bones.

The first of the marks rests there: a vivid, enraged line that cuts the skin at the base of Sherlock’s throat, raised and dark pink with newborn flesh.

“Mycroft had them killed,” Sherlock says hollowly, and it’s this that pulls John forward until his mouth is nestled against Sherlock’s neck, until he’s kissing the fiery scar that exists there.

Sherlock is utterly still. Then he gasps, sinks down a little bit, forms his hands around John’s so tightly that it hurts.

“I love you,” John says again. Like nothing. Like a promise. Like facts. His lips brush Sherlock’s flesh with every word. His voice grows fervent. “And I wouldn’t have let them do this to you in the first place.”

When John looks up, Sherlock is smiling at him just barely. The soft, aching, wet-eyed smile of someone who is lost. “I know,” he murmurs, slotting his fingers between John’s and resting his cheek against their clasps hands. He blinks slowly. “That’s why you couldn’t come.”

***

Sherlock’s body fits perfectly along the length of John’s bed: his arms folded over a pillow, cheek resting on his arms, legs and waist and torso nestled in the divot John’s own frame has made in the mattress. His eyelids drift to a fluttering shut as John settles on his knees in the space between Sherlock’s legs, and trails one finger down the length of Sherlock’s spine; his shoulders roll up, then back, then still.

His back is a web of scars that run like fleshy rivers.

They span the width of his back—cracks in plaster, valleys dug into a plane of earth, gouges and slashes and small, circle shaped burns that John knows come from the ends of cigarettes. The lowest one starts at the base of Sherlock’s spine, the highest crawls up under the delicate curl at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, and, trying to settle his heart, John begins there.

John’s mouth fits perfectly at the base of Sherlock’s skull. Sherlock shivers when their skin makes contact, and otherwise keeps still.

“Alright?” John murmurs shakily, moving to hover over a bright red mark that cuts across Sherlock’s shoulder. His breath fans out gently, and leaves a rash of tiny bumps across Sherlock’s skin it its wake.

“John,” Sherlock says, the noise low and hitched in his throat. “Yes.”

“Good,” John answers. He brushes his lips over that scar, from the beginning to the end, one hand braced by Sherlock’s head and the other by his waist. He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, ringing and strong, and it carries him through his next movement, and the next, and the next. “Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says gently.

Sherlock takes a moment to answer, and John pauses in the silence. Sherlock’s eyes are tightly shut, his mouth hanging open a bit as he struggles to inhale ragged breath after ragged breath of cool, clean air. He reaches blindly behind him with one hand, getting a grip on John’s wrist and squeezing tightly with quivering fingers.

“Don’t stop,” he rasps. And so John doesn’t.

Sherlock shivers as John moves down, down, down; John calms him with soft strokes to his waist, the curve of his ribs, the length of his thighs. His hands shake, too, but inside he is steady. He is steady as the pounding of his heart, steady as the pumping of his blood, steady as the frame of this bed.

He is in love with the man he touches.

***

When John is done, Sherlock sobs quietly into his pillow. John molds himself over Sherlock, holds him tight as he shakes, and doesn’t leave.

***

John’s bed is John and Sherlock’s bed, now.

***

“I don’t want to go.”

John sighs. Sherlock is curled on his side before the hearth, wrapped in nothing but the sheet from their bed. He stares up at John with enough of his old vivacity in his eyes that John is finding it extremely difficult to deny him this. It’s been a long time since that obstinate glint has flickered behind those multi coloured eyes. John has missed it in a way he never thought he would.

“Sherlock. Just… twenty minutes. That’s it. Twenty minutes, have a drink, keep the insults to a bare minimum, and then we can go.” He sinks to a crouch beside Sherlock’s swaddled form, stroking his hand idly down the length of Sherlock’s arm as he does so. He smiles a little bit. “When we get home, I’ll let you pick what film we watch tonight, and I won’t complain one time when you ruin all the plotty bits.”

“Everyone who is going to be there is so  _ boring, _ ” Sherlock moans, but he sounds halfhearted at best, and John can tell he’s relenting.

“Present company excluded, I should hope?” John asks as his smile broadens into a grin.

“Don’t be tedious,” Sherlock sniffs, but he’s smiling now, too. Somehow, over the course of this conversation, their fingers have tangled together, and Sherlock pets at John’s hand in a strangely endearing way.

“Tell me one thing, John,” Sherlock says. He tilts his head on the carpet, and the static makes his curls puff. “Tell me why I should care that it’s Inspector Lestrade’s birthday. Tell me.”

John considers this briefly. The usual arguments—such as “he’s our friend,” “because that’s polite,” and “I can’t believe you even have to ask me this question”—will not work on Sherlock Holmes. John knows this. After hesitating a moment, John decides to go out on a rather hopeful limb.

“Because I care,” John says. “And I know you like to make me happy.”

There’s a moment of silence between them.

Sherlock has been back for five months. His silences have grown less consuming, less terrifying. He startles less. He stands with the echoes of his old bravado again—shoulders straight, neck long, chin tipped at a regal angle that makes John weak in the knees. His smiles are wider and more frequent, and while John knows he’s still not ok, might not ever be ok again, they are… they’re getting somewhere. They might not ever be able to sleep in separate beds again, they might hold tightly to each other’s hand when they’re doing the shopping for the rest of their lives, but that’s  _ fine _ , that’s such a small price to pay, now that he’s back. Back. Safe.

Something around the corners of Sherlock’s eyes softens and he sits up so that he faces John, cradling John’s hand in both of his own. “Alright,” he says quietly, staring down at John’s palm wrapped in Sherlock’s hands. If John ducks his head just a little bit, he catches the glancing edge of a soft smile; rosebud pink, graceful, the dawn washing nighttime with sun. “I’ll go. For you.”

John smooths the hair back from his forehead and kisses him softly there in thanks. Sherlock’s eyes flutter shut and he tips his head back—and the smile stays.

“Go get dressed,” John tells him. His heart brims with fondness. “We’re leaving in ten.”

***

Sherlock and John stand in a corner, and one by one the guests come to them with smiles and happy words, greetings, warm hugs. If gazes linger on their clasped hands, John doesn’t notice. If Sherlock stands close enough to breathe in, John just smiles and inhales.

After, there’s midnight takeaway, there’s James Bond in the DVR and there’s falling asleep tangled together on the sofa. There’s calm.

***

Morning dawns. It’s a goldenrod morning, a newborn day. Sherlock is in the kitchen humming quietly to himself, movements unhurried and practiced as he takes down two cups from the cabinet. He’s wearing his blue dressing gown; it rests on his shoulders comfortably, and his dark curls brush the rumpled collar.

John is breathless with the beauty of him.

Sherlock turns around, bare feet lithe on the floor. His face breaks into a smile when he sees John, a smile so bright that the morning sun coming in through the windows dims in comparison.

“John,” Sherlock says, voice like music. “I’ve had a thought.”

John couldn’t speak if he tried. He drifts closer, overwhelmed with the sight of Sherlock Holmes, soft and happy and thinking in their kitchen, and tilts his head.

“It’s not the first time I’ve thought this,” Sherlock informs him. His long fingers dance along the edge of John’s sleeve; flighty things. “But it’s the first time I’ve been brave enough to say it.” Sherlock’s smile grows again, pulls wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, at his chin. Beautiful.

“John,” Sherlock hums. “I love you.”

And he looks so happy with saying it—so utterly, perfectly content. His cheeks are blushed pink, his eyes bright, and his fingers wander down to meet John’s, clinging to them lightly.

John opens his lips to speak. Nothing comes out.

“You make things quiet,” Sherlock whispers to him, slow-eyed and vibrant. “Right here—“ he lifts John’s hand and places it on his own temple— “and right here.” He lifts it again, presses it close to his rapid-fire heart with the span of his palm. “You make things good.”

In the quiet, sun-drenched kitchen of 221b, John Watson kisses Sherlock Holmes. Dust motes dance around them, and Sherlock Holmes kisses John Watson back.

***

Sometimes, they talk about it.

In whispers at dinner. In hitched breaths and long moans during the pitch black night. In quiet, early-morning reminders, in petulant declarations, in soft, hopeful, fledgling promises.

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. _

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on twitter! I'm @unicornpoe.


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